YOU AUTO KNOW: Good recovery skills can save your life

If you are not familiar with handling a driving situation where you unintentionally drop one or two wheels off the road — become familiar; it could save your life. - 123RF Stock Photo

One of the principal causes of crashes is how the driver reacts to dropping a wheel or two off the road. This occurs most often during the summer driving period, caused by inexperience, weariness or inattention — or a combination of one or more of these.

If you ever wondered what those long, twisting black marks are on the road going from one side to another, the chances are they were caused by someone reacting too severely to dropping their wheels off the paved surface unto the shoulder.

Most often this will happen because they were not paying attention or had nodded off. It can also happen at dawn and dusk or other times of poor lighting or at night when a driver might have been temporarily blinded by oncoming lights.

Whatever the reason, the driver who jammed on the brakes or whipped the wheel suddenly to get back on the road likely ended up going across the road into the opposing lane or the opposite ditch.

The proper procedure, once you determine you are off the road and wish to return, is to ease off the gas, reduce speed and then slowly and gradually steer back onto the road with a firm grip on the wheel.

If there is sufficient room and time, you can apply gentle brake pressure to further reduce speed before steering back unto the road.

If you are not familiar with what to do in this situation — practise. Find a piece of straight and level road with good sight lines, little traffic and a smooth shoulder with no drop off. Driving slowly, barely more than at idle speed.

Gradually steer so that the right side wheels leave the road and go onto the shoulder. Feel the sensation in the wheel and listen for the difference in tire noise. Keep looking way down the road, gradually steering back unto the road.

Do this repeatedly, gradually increasing your speed as you become more comfortable and experienced. If the two surfaces are at distinctly different levels, i.e. if the shoulder is more than a few centimetres lower than the pavement, the steering input (amount the wheel is turned) might have to be slightly greater to allow the front tire to crawl back onto the road.

The trick here is to be smooth and deliberate in your reactions. With two wheels on a grippy paved surface and two on a loose surface with hardly any grip, traction is minimal.

The worst thing you can do is to suddenly place an additional load on the front tires — which is what happens when you apply too much steering input.

If the vehicle is older and does not have ABS, the same amount of stopping force is applied to each front tire.

Guess what happens? The one with the grip grabs the road and the one with none loses contact and starts to slide.

Since the tire with traction is the one road —the left tire — it generates almost all the braking pressure, pulling the vehicle violently back unto the road.

If the driver is not extremely alert and practiced, he or she will not be able to recognize this in time to take corrective action and the vehicle will be pulled into the opposite lane or ditch.

Here is one of the instances where ABS is so important. If the vehicle is equipped with ABS, even the wrong reaction — jumping on the brakes — will be electronically corrected.

The system automatically adjusts brake pressure to each wheel individually preventing lockup and allowing the driver to maintain steering and thus control.

The same thing will happen if the driver reacts too violently and provides excessive steering input.

If their steering reaction was too severe, they might have also caused their vehicle to lose traction and spin in the direction of the other lane or ditch.

In any case, the reaction was wrong and the result often deadly.

If you are not familiar with this situation — become familiar. It can save your life.

The physics and reactions at work here become more significant in poor traction conditions — gravel roads, wet roads and most importantly, winter driving.